Just a Kid
by Olive Drab
Summary: Oneshot. Colonel Potter helps BJ come to terms with a difficult day.


**Disclaimer**: I don't own anything to do with MASH – sad but true.

**A/N:** Not much humour in this one, but then some situations don't have much scope for laughs. I'll try to be more upbeat next time!

**Just a Kid**

Colonel Sherman Potter cursed under his breath as his toe came into sharp contact with a stone. _These pre-dawn trips to the latrine are enough of a pain without that, _he thought_. The many joys of older age…. _Taking a little more care about where he put his feet, Potter headed back towards his own tent, but stopped again when he thought he saw a movement in the darkness.

"Is someone there?" he called quietly, glancing around for the sentry.

"It's just me, Colonel." The tall figure of BJ Hunnicutt emerged from the shadows. "Couldn't sleep."

Something in the other man's posture and tone alerted the Colonel. Night time was when the demons came to gloat, and to steal much-needed sleep. He'd seen this happen before, far too many times.

"Why don't you come on back to my place?" he said casually. "I have a mighty fine bottle of Scotch that could do with some company."

Wordlessly, BJ nodded and trailed behind him to his tent like a lost puppy. Potter turned on the light but as he waved the young doctor towards a chair, he noticed something that cranked up the alarm bells even more.

"Are you okay, son? There's blood on your face"

BJ touched the dried smear distractedly. "It's not mine."

"Didn't see you in the mess tent this evening."

"No."

Realising he was going to have to take a more direct route to the problem, Potter fixed their drinks, taking the time to decide the best way to handle this.

"Rough day, BJ?" he said softly, handing over a glass and seating himself on the edge of his cot.

"It's nothing. It's just …. sometimes…" BJ shook his head and looked into his drink. "You know, after a while in a place like this you think that you've seen everything; that you can handle just about anything. And that's just when the war creeps up and hits you from behind."

"I've been in this man's army longer than you've been alive, and if I've learned anything it's that you've never seen everything." Potter paused. "What happened today, son?"

There was a long silence. Potter knew that the other man was torn, not wanting to lay his burden on another's shoulders but at the same time needing very, very much to share it. He knew enough to give BJ the time he needed to get his thoughts straight and was rewarded when the words at last started to come, although BJ still wouldn't meet his eye.

"You were already in the OR when the last ambulance came in this afternoon. They'd stopped to pick up a little girl from the side of the road – from beside her parents' bodies. It seems a shell went inconveniently astray." BJ smiled bitterly, shaking his head. "Nobody even knew if it was ours or theirs. Anyway, she was about eighteen months old, I guess, and she was a real mess. I picked her up. I was going to carry her inside to save time. She reached up and touched my cheek," he fingered the blood on his face. "And she smiled at me – the most beautiful smile you could imagine. And then she died. I was holding her in my arms and I felt the life go out of her body and I saw the light go out of her eyes."

BJ swirled the golden liquid in his glass as if fascinated by the light reflecting in it.

"My professional detachment doesn't stretch to the death of babies," he said so quietly that the Colonel scarcely caught his words.

"And you should thank God it doesn't. If you can ever take the death of a child in your stride, you'll be a poor doctor and a worse human being for it," said Potter.

BJ's face was a battleground of grief and fury.

"She didn't die in some accident! She didn't get sick! She was shelled! Shelled by people who will never know what they did to her! She died alone, and probably the last memory she had was of her parents being blown to bits! How can that be right? How can that be anything _close to_ right?"

"It isn't right. And it isn't fair. But it isn't your fault either." The words sounded hollow and trite to Potter even as he said them.

BJ continued as if he hadn't heard, his voice breaking. "We're meant to look after kids – we're supposed to care for them and keep them from harm. And look what we're doing instead!"

The Colonel sought desperately for something to say, some way to ease the pain without patronising or belittling. How could there be words of comfort here?

"BJ, did you do everything you could to save that little girl?"

BJ's head snapped up and he met finally met the Colonel's steady gaze, startled, then immediately outraged. "What the hell kind of question is that? Of course I did!"

"Then you did what you said we are all meant to do - you looked after her. And she didn't die alone, son. She died in the arms of someone who cared for her, instead of in the dust by the roadside." Potter leaned forward, as if to force the truth of his words into the other man's mind. "You may wish you'd been anywhere else in the world at that moment BJ, but believe me, you were right where you were needed the most. The pain you're feeling now is proof of that."

A pause, then that agonisingly bitter smile returned. "Well if all I could do was be there, then I guess I did that. And if the only thing I can do now is grieve for her and for the life she never got to live, then that's something too. There's no one else left to."

BJ took a deep breath, then drained his glass.

"I'm sorry to lay all this at your door Colonel, especially at this time of night, and thanks for lending me your shoulder. I guess today just hit a little close to home."

Potter nodded. Anyone would have struggled with the scene BJ had described, but it must have been close to heartbreaking for such a devoted family man.

"It's not a weakness to care son," he said, reaching over to refill both their glasses. "Far from it. And the shoulder's always there. I carry it everywhere with me, just in case it's needed."

He sat back and took a drink, taking time to savour the aroma and the smooth taste, and starting to relax. Maybe the demons had been beaten back into the darkness, for this night at least. "So, have you heard from the family recently?"

As BJ put down his glass to reach into a pocket, the Colonel hid a smile - somehow he wasn't surprised that the man carried a picture of his family, even in his bathrobe.

BJ was a lot calmer and the level in the Scotch bottle a lot lower when Potter walked the exhausted doctor back to the Swamp. BJ was asleep almost before he could get his boots off. As he turned to leave, Potter glanced around the tent at the other occupants. Hawkeye Pierce seemed to grow more gaunt every day, he thought, the jokes a little more forced every day. And Charles Winchester was spending far more time than was healthy alone with his books and music.

_They look exhausted even when they're asleep, _he thought._ BJ's worried about the suffering of the kids here, but dear God - look what this place is doing to our young men._


End file.
